Saint Sébastien soigné par les anges

Rubens was in his early twenties and freshly arrived in Italy when he made this, during his first stay in Rome around 1601. A Flemish painter from Antwerp, he had come south to study antique sculpture and the Italian masters at first hand, and it shows in the muscular, statue-like body at the centre. The subject is an unusual one. Most images of Saint Sebastian show him pierced with arrows at the moment of martyrdom, while here the arrows are already being drawn out, angels tending the wounded man as his armour lies discarded on the ground, a reminder that Sebastian had been an officer in the Roman army. Rubens would spend eight years in Italy before carrying everything he learned back north.